Pre Arizona 1979-81
December 27, 1980 – January 7, 1981
Working on the Rephotographic Survey Project taught me a lot about making landscape photographs, and I also became very familiar with Polaroid’s Type 55 positive/negative film made for use in view cameras. The film produced an instant print and 4×5 inch negative that could be developed on site. The film’s advantage to the RSP was that we could see the results of choices made with the camera – position, framing and exposure. Once an image was exposed, developed and examined, we knew we could leave the site having produced a usable image. The negative could later be enlarged to make high quality prints. Thanks to Polaroid’s donations, we had plenty of film for the project’s fieldwork, so after the second year I began to use some of the film to make my own landscape photographs.
The pictures began with a few “alternate views” that I made in reference to the work of original photographers like Timothy O’Sullivan. Later, I started to use the film to make pictures at home where I lived at the time in Ketchum, Idaho. I loved the instantaneous nature of the Polaroid film process, the way it enabled spontaneity when setting up and framing an image. It seemed to contradict the formal demands of working a large and bulky view camera.
At the same time I gave up making the photographs I had been working on outside of the RSP up to that point, color photographs made from 35mm film that were formal explorations of ordinary urban scenes. I switched in favor of the black and white Polaroid process, and found that it could also be more personal, and I could include friends, events, and the places I visited. My practice became closer to my life at the time. I saw these photographs as my snapshots, and their departure from the concerns I had about art practice felt very liberating.